


Cannonball

by cofax



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-12
Updated: 2010-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's too hot.</p><p>Written for Salieri.  Posted July 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cannonball

"Doctor McKay."

 

McKay didn't respond. Radek looked at him, hunched sideways over his laptop, head tilted so the sweat wouldn't drip on the keyboard, and shook his head. Rodney was quite capable of ignoring even Dr. Weir, when he was buried in a problem.

 

Radek shrugged and tapped his own radio. "Zelenka here, Doctor Weir. McKay is unavailable."

 

"I see." Her voice was dry even through the filter of the radio. "Can I assume he's working on the problem?"

 

McKay raised a hand and swatted it in the air, as if batting away Weir's voice. The sweaty blotches on his t-shirt had expanded; Radek was just glad he hadn't taken his shirt off. They were friends, but not the sort of friends where one wanted to compare relative amounts of body hair. Besides, Radek was sure he'd lose: he took after his father.

 

"Yes, yes," he replied. "He's working, I'm working, cooling system shall be fixed. Forthwith?"

 

McKay rolled his eyes. Perhaps 'forthwith' wasn't the word, then.

 

Weir sighed. "Fine. Keep me informed." Radek slumped when she cut out; he always felt he ought to sit up straight when she was nearby, eat his vegetables, wear sensible shoes. Lovely woman, strangely intimidating.

 

The lab stools, not comfortable at the best of times, were positively torturous in the heat. Sweat made them slick, and something about the humidity caused the seats to wobble more, so one ran a constant risk of being dumped onto the floor. Radek pushed his stool out of the way and slid down to the floor, leaning against the cabinets. Possibly 0.3 degrees cooler down here.

 

They'd arrived in Atlantis in what must have been late fall; now it was summer, and to their horror, they had discovered that the Ancients didn't really have an A/C system. The heating system was fine: they had stayed relatively warm all winter, so long as they kept sections closed off to conserve energy.

 

But this was summer, a grim, grey, steaming summer: worse even than the horrifying week Radek had once spent in New Orleans for a conference. One would think the city's location in the ocean would keep it cool; for reasons passing meteorological understanding, one would be wrong.

 

Most personnel had changed their dress to compensate, although the department heads, following Weir's lead, had resisted the longest. But after three weeks of ever-increasing heat, even Major Sheppard was to be seen most commonly in a shabby pair of shorts and flip-flopping sandals. He wouldn't even wear a shirt unless he was in a meeting. With Weir.

 

The science staff was less free-wheeling -- or well-defined, Radek admitted silently -- and generally kept their shirts on. The heat, however, was also interfering with the laundry facilities; as a result, everyone was running out of clean clothing, and the entire city was beginning to smell a bit like the locker room of Radek's secondary school. Although, thankfully, without the mildew. So far.

 

He sighed and bonked his head against the cabinet door behind him. McKay had had an idea this morning, about venting heat into the ocean, but so far it had turned out to be yet another dead-end. If they'd had an uninterrupted stretch of time--but there never was such a thing. The iris had failed to re-deploy after AG-3 came back from a visit to Perinor; Doctor Brady had mistaken an energy surge in the sensor system for a Wraith ship; three Marines had come back from a reconnaissance of the southwest pier babbling about ghosts.

 

And while McKay and Radek ran from one crisis to another, the heat built and built. Until it, too, was a crisis: it was 40 degrees even in the most sheltered areas of the city, and hotter outside. There were at least a dozen cases of heatstroke already, and the cafeteria was completely out of ice. Everyone looked wilted, even Teyla.

 

You put wilted flowers in water, Radek thought, and sat up. "My brain is stewing," he announced to McKay, who was listing to starboard rather alarmingly.

 

"Better than panfried," said McKay absently, his eyes dull in his flushed face. He tapped at the keyboard. Then again, harder. He groaned. "No, no, not you too--!"

 

Heat is the enemy of electronics.

 

Radek leaned across McKay, tapped Alt-F4, Y, and then closed the laptop firmly. "Safer this way," he said, picking it up and storing it in the cabinet above the lab table. "You throw things and supply of laptops not infinite."

 

"But you can't!"

 

"Have. Besides, stewed brain produces soggy thoughts. Time to cool off." He prodded McKay off the lap stool, reluctant to actually touch him: everyone was sticky and rank in the heat. Worse than New Orleans: Atlantis had no mint juleps. "Come with me."

 

"I have to--"

 

"Stop. Talking. Too hot." It was, if possible, even hotter in the hallways. The ventilation system in the ten-thousand-plus years old city couldn't begin to compensate; the best they could hope for was that it would prevent any hazardous buildup of gases.

 

Rodney staggered along semi-obediently, shoulders hunched, the dark patch on his tattered green t-shirt spreading as they walked. "Where we going?"

 

"Forty degrees celsius, Rodney, where should we go?"

 

Radek led them to the transporter, which deposited them on the end of a pier seven levels below the control complex. As they walked from the transporter doors, they heard voices. It was marginally cooler here, closer to the water.

 

Lots closer to the water, as it turned out.

 

Radek had found it; Sheppard had gotten it to work; and nearly every member of the expedition was using it at the moment. On the city maps it was marked "aquatarium", but everyone else just called it the City Pool. It was the size of a city block, surrounded by acres of benches and space for lounge chairs (which they didn't have), and windows opening into the afternoon.

 

A light breeze came through the windows; Radek could tell by the way people turned to face it, expressions softening just slightly. There were more than thirty people in the pool, most clustered around the edges, floating or clinging to the lip, chatting. Major Sheppard had found something that floated, and kicked lazily across the pool, clinging to his blue board like a child. Kavanagh wasn't in the water: he didn't even look wet. But he was wearing shorts, and sat comfortably by the window, reading something with a lurid red cover.

 

Airman Jones and her romance collection were both very popular this summer.

 

McKay sighed, pulled his t-shirt off, dropped it on the tile floor, and walked right off the lip into the pool. Nobody blinked as he sank all the way down, and then surfaced slowly, rotating until he ended floating on his back, face blank and eyes closed.

 

Radek considered following suit, and then noticed the new structure at the far end. "Is that?"

 

"It certainly is." He hadn't noticed Weir, sitting quietly with her feet in the water. She wore something that might have been an exercise outfit, or a bathing suit, or underwear. Whatever it was, it was dark maroon and flattered her. Her hair was slicked back behind her ears, a smile playing on her face. "It was the Major's idea."

 

Sheppard kicked by, moving faster than one would think: he was an efficient swimmer. When he met up with McKay, he dunked him. Rodney squawked and spluttered; nobody seemed to notice. Conversations continued, slowed and muffled by the heat, by the way the lowering sun came through the windows, by the cool touch of the water.

 

Radek smiled, ducked his head at Doctor Weir, and headed towards the other end of the pool, where there was now a diving board. He had a sudden urge to produce a cannonball.


End file.
